Reviving some Coffeeshop Love

Pannikin (Downtown La Jolla, on Girard Ave.)

The Living Room has officially been displaced, its spot in my heart taken by the much-more-deliciously-grungy/hipster Pannikin. (Not quite winning me over yet, though...it's currently vying with The Art of Espresso for the first place title in my heart. Neither of them are open as late as The Coffee Garden, but at least you can lurk inside of Pannikin 'til just before dinnertime, then venture down the street to The Living Room if you really can't bear the thought of leaving La Jolla. Why'd I leave La Jolla again?)

I love the quirky, artsy vibe of this little coffee cabin. The female servers are (laid-back hotties who also happen to be) really really sweet, and they definitely make the place feel welcoming if you’re a regular. The males tend to have a smug hipster vibe, but they’re cute so I guess they can get away with it.

Speaking of cute! There’s a giant chess set, torn-up pleather booths, folding chairs by a fireplace, plenty of local art, a bathroom-wall mural that informs you how grateful you ought to be for coffee (because it makes you a more interesting person, of course). And a nice outdoor patio with a table where the world record for longest conversation was held (or so a plaque on said tiny table boasts).

Red pleather, giant chess, and a dirty chai. I don't know what happened to my picture of the table-plaque.

Less cute: Finches. The outdoor seating area is teeming with them. They WILL eat your delicious vegan granola bar if you look away for long enough. Scratch that, you don’t have to look away. Those little dinosaurs are gutsy as fuck.

Evidence of gutsy-as-fuckery, as of September of 2012. Also evidence of the most delicious vegan granola bars in existence. And the adorable patio (and patio-dwellers), the tree, the roses, and the fact that I was reading a book and wearing black pants while I sipped my almondy iced chai through a red straw. I miss that.

Soy/almond milk is extra, but you can also get their spicy chai mixture sans any milky addition whatsoever. (The guy I tended to order a just-chai from got a bit incredulous when I do this, but he complies. He also grimaced when I ordered something “dirty,” but made it anyway. Everyone’s entitled to their opinions, I suppose. And part of the charm of the hipstery place is the slightly-unprofessional tone that the servers take with the customers.)

The chai is mixed in-house, I believe, so it’s not syrupy at all. Which is a welcome change of pace from the mouth-coatingly chemical feeling of alienation you might get elsewhere. (Or, you know, just a little more fresh…if you want to be less dramatic about your beverages. I can't see why you'd want to do kill my buzz like that, though. Jerk.) Their chai mixture is decent: not too spicy, but it’s not tooooo sweet either. (A bit sweeter than I'd prefer, but then again I drink this stuff.)

Fair warning for (crazyass) vegans: the lightly-sweetened chai mixture is made with bee-vomited plant-sperm (aka honey).

They also have (yummy) vegan bagels and an assortment of breakfast and lunch items (none of which I’ve tried, few of which seem vegan). And they play a quirky assortment of oldies, indie rock, acoustic/experimental/uncensored stuff, and world music. Depends on whose iPod is hooked up to the (My Little Ponies-topped) speakers at the time, I suppose…

Hours: early-5ish? I don't remember, really. SorryI'mnotsorry.

Service: My favorite combination of snarky and genuinely nice.

Seating: Comfortably rickety, for the most part. Some tall and sturdy wooden stools on the outdoor patio, assorted chairs by the tables under the tree and umbrellas. The indoor booths (with outlets!) are ripping (p)leather, but those wooden folding chairs by the window are pristine vintage nook-fillers. Speaking of nook-fillers, right next door to Pannikin is an exquisitely overcrowded bookstore that you absolutely must visit. If you end up in a car dealership, you went the wrong way.

Eatables: TRY THE VEGAN GRANOLA BAR. WORTH EVERY DOLLAR.

People: A friendly assortment of older/middle-aged regulars, schoolkids, twenty-somethings like myself, tourists, and your standard hipsterkids.

Music: Baristas’ (hipster) iPod selections.

I meant to post this on my grandmother's 93rd birthday.

I've returned...

So.

This is kind of awkward, but I seem to have closed the La-Jolla-dwelling chapter of my life. Don't get me wrong, I'll still visit. (It's where my favorite person lives, for Chai's sake!) But I'm not going to live in La Jolla. Not long-term anyway. Sure, I'll always love it. And I've made some lovely friends, most of whom I'd be really sad to think I'd never see again...

But I explored the coffeeshops, found my local ambrosia(s), fueled my insomnia...and now it's time to move on.

For nostalgia's sake, here's a little pit stop back in my home town. (It's not a chai place, but this was never really about The Perfect Chai. Surely that's become apparent. The music, the lurkability, the heart-warming heat of the drink-in-hand, the people...No, it was bigger than the chai in my belly--big as that belly may have gotten. It was about Finding Home.):

The Coffee Garden (2904 Franklin Blvd Sacramento CA 95818)

I used to come for the ambiance, but I'd buy a coffee and maybe a salad or a bagel so they wouldn’t kick me out. Even then, I felt like the unfriendly man at the cash register was itching to kick me out for being too happy.

I think I tried the chai, but it left no lasting impression. Similarly with the food. As for the coffee, there are a few roasts, and they let you fill up for yourself so you can even make your own special blend. Or just take a sip of each before choosing the lightest roast and chugging it like water. Or sipping it like your only excuse to be there and wondering if they'll let you re-heat it when it gets past the delicious-tepid-stage and into the unpleasantly-frigid-settling-into-grains. (They probably won't, but the first refill is free and the second is under a dollar...)

Hours: 6 a.m.-11 p.m. every day but Sunday (7 a.m.-10 p.m. on Sundays)

Service: One unfriendly man and a handful of charming barista ladies. And some guys too, probably. Mostly there’s just the one EXTREMELY unfriendly man, who I think owns the place or something, because his presence is inescapable. (I mostly forgive him because once he wore a shirt bedecked with a reference to Me and You and Everyone We Know.)

This one. On a brown shirt.

Seating: ADORABLE. Fairy lights outside and quirky metal sculptures everywhere. Chess sets and barstools! Coffee Garden, you know the way to this girl’s heart! I don't even care if you're vaguely emotionally abusive!

Eatables: Yeah, the use’ (that’s pronounced “youge,” like short for “usual”): salads, sandwiches, quiches, pastries, bagels, packaged overpriced vegan cookies, slightly-overripe and overpriced fruits, etc.

People: Cute, musically-inclined (Like I said, I'd come for the ambiance, which was my favorite on the open mic nights on Thursdays...) Apparently they also host gay-man game nights and atheist nights, if those are your scenes.

Music: Open mic!

Art is better than Magic.

I'm not entirely sure why I thought this was the perfect picture to accompany my review of this coffee cart. Because it's, like, my eternal reward? A diamond in the rough? I think the latter, probably.

The Art of Espresso (UCSD campus)

$2.75 for a single-shot dirty medium soy spiced chai to go (bringing my own to-go mug got me a 25-cent discount)

Ummmm…yummm?

I’ve been to this charming coffee cart a few times since moving to La Jolla, so I can confidently say that the deliciousness I experienced on my first visit was no fluke. The spicy chai is actually spicy. (Not as perfectly, mouth-tinglingly savorable as Chico Chai…but so far I’ve found nothing that is.) And the espresso is pulled beautifully. (I think. I liked the single shot in my dirty chai, at least. It didn’t taste burned, and it had that bitter bite that blissfully induces the heart-buzzing, migraine-distracting jitter I look for in my espresso.)

I’ve only had the spiced chai, so I can’t speak to the vanilla chai. 

I'm pretty sure this is what I paid almost $3 for. You know what, though? I aintevenmad. They added soy and probably some other stuff and made me feel special and gave me a cute place to sit while I drank it. Totally worth it.

(Presumably the vanilla one is better for that large percentage of chai-sippers who prefer their beverages to be tastebud-blindingly sweet. Forget religion—sugar is the opiate of the masses.) It’s pretty thick, with a syrup that gives your mouth a faint chalky coating as you drink and leaves a crunchy-grained residue on the bottom of your mug. Which, in this case, I actually like.

There tends to be a line to the coffee cart, but it moves quickly. Soy is extra, but the bring-your-own-mug discount kind of compensates for it. The servers are nice and don’t flinch at the indecisive and/or hesitant customer with the imposingly specific order (i.e., someone like me).

There are a couple of nearby counters with plenty of options for your stirrer/straw-snagging, re-heating, snack-toasting, and general drink-doctoring pleasure. Plus there’s free wifi, AND the people-watching is pretty sweet (college kids, professors, and professional lurkers like myself…most of whom seem attractively intelligent, not that I’m biased or anything). The only real downside is that the seating area is just a bunch of plastic chairs and tables on a cement “patio” by the cart. Soooo it’s not a place that’s exactly conducive to clutching that delicious beverage as the rain pelts against your window. (Unless you take your drink into one of the nearby academic buildings, I guess.) Also, the cart closes at 4 p.m.

So it’s not the place for pouring fuel into your insomnia-tank. UNLESS YOU GET A COUPLE GALLONS TO-GO.

Hours: 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays

Service: Excellent. Particularly given the fact that I’m a quiet, mumbly, and indecisive person who tends to end up ordering a multi-syllabic drink of prissy high-maintenance specifications. (Only complaint: Their website claims they have a rewards card for espresso drinks, but I haven’t spotted it on their cluttered little ordering countertop. I haven’t looked too closely, though, since don’t exactly want to take extra time when I reach the front of the line…but shouldn’t it be prominently displayed?)

Seating: Baby trees and cobblestones in the midst of a busy campus. A few wooden seats with side-tables attached to them, and an array of plastic tables that are at least half full (I’m an optimist) of lovely fellow-lurkers at all hours.

Eatables: Your typical bakery fare of croissants/pastries, single-serving bags of chips, bananas, candy bars, wraps, sandwiches, oatmeal cups, massive cookies, artisan truffles, and bagels (which I’ve never tried, but which look delicious, soft and not-chewy the way I like ‘em…and they’re generally sold out by 2 p.m.).

People: Lovely. Beautiful. Charming. Fill-me-to-the-brim with college nostalgia.

Music: A healthy mix of hand-clapping and wailing over xylophones/pipes, breathy electronopop, dubstep remixes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, etc.